It's a Boy Brawl! Mark Ames v. Malcolm Harris

Well, here’s a mildly
misguided takedown of someone you’ve likely never heard of. Are
you in the mood for that? It’s Wednesday, why not! So it’s Mark
Ames—of the eXile infamy—on the topic of Malcolm Harris, who
writes for The New Inquiry. Have you had enough already?
Walk away! Be free! Otherwise… Ames’ point is basically like this:
Occupy was kind of irritating, then kind of amazing, but then
really irritating, and that’s all because pretentious, obnoxious
twits were trying to use Occupy as a platform. “To me,” Ames
writes, “the Occupy Movement will always be conflated with Malcolm
Harris and the brand of marketing-concocted ‘anarchism’ that he
represents.” Ames’ central complaints are that 1. Harris pulled the
“Radiohead is performing at Occupy!” prank/scam and 2. this
remarkable marketing sheet for Harris, which goes like this:
“Often called the Naomi Klein of the 21st century, Malcolm’s sharp
and prescient critiques carry weight—unlike other theoriests,
Malcolm makes his stand outside the establishment.” [sic, etc.] My
beef is that’s true and not true.

It’s not true in the sense that you could go to endless
Occupy meetings (sorry, “people’s assemblies”) and never see the
likes of a Malcolm Harris, and you could go to plenty of
demonstrations and never catch a whiff of him or his ilk. The
people across the country who did the real heavy lifting of Occupy
were, you know, busy doing the heavy lifting. (Just like in every
political movement: it’s the people behind the scenes getting
people fed and working out logistics who are the real backbone of
these organizations.)

But then it is also a good point Ames makes, in that Malcolm
Harris is a force of chaos and surely ambition, and also a
terrifically catty and unfiltered piece of work, as you can see
from his Twitter.
Should you want more, by the way, takedown publisher Paul Carr and others were going
at it on Twitter all night. Then for several hours they were
getting their beauty sleep while people with square jobs were doing
things. But seriously boys, can’t we all just do cocaine-Adderall
halfsies together in Bushwick and get along? (No? We can’t?
Okay.)

UPDATE: Oh good, everyone’s awake and back at it!

.@rachelrosenfelt only
unethical thing I saw in there was labeling Malcolm Harris the
Naomi Klein of the 21st century